Perditus
by tincwen
Summary: One Shot. It's been a long time since that day. He hasn't confronted it yet and when he finally does, he finds it hurts a lot more than he wanted to believe.


**Disclaimer** I do not own any of Sir Doyle's characters or Moffat's renditions of said characters.

**Summary **It's been a long time since that day. He hasn't confronted it yet and when he finally does, he finds it hurts a lot more than he wanted to believe. [one shot]

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**Perditus**  
[latin]  
ruined, desperate, lost, undone, abandoned, outcast.

Time. Time heals all wounds. At least, that is what they have always told me. It heals wounds no matter how large and painful they are. You just have to keep pressing forward and convince yourself it is possible to move past it. I used to believe that. I had my fair share of wounds; both physical and mental. I had become accustomed to agony and depression… had accepted that it was all merely a part of life and we, as human beings, have to live through it. Who lives a perfectly happy life, anyway? No one and I knew this.

After my time in the war, I had a lot of wounds I had to heal. Both mental and physical. War does that, you know; it can utterly destroy a person. I cannot say that I was destroyed, but I was damaged. The soldier… the war doctor… that was who I had become, how I had learned to define myself. When that was stripped away I did not know who I was and I felt I had no purpose. I was a lost soul in a very bleak world, not having a clue where to pick up and go from. It was all a load of bullocks to me, if I'm being honest. Everything that the shrink said to me. I tried to understand where she was coming from, but it all made no lick of sense. I did what she told me to do anyway…. What choice did I have?

Just as I was beginning to believe things would never change, I met him. At the time I didn't realize just how much things were going to change, but for some reason I could sense that they were in motion again. After feeling dead for so long, there was a spark of energy in the air. I couldn't help but feel drawn to it, so I simply dived in head first. I didn't think, weigh the pros and cons, I just said yes and that was the end of that.

Life didn't seem to stop after that. Time kept ticking by, and the spark I felt had burned into an overwhelming flame. I was loving every minute of it. Each day brought forth something new and my mind was itching and racing to understand, to divulge, to learn, to deduce. There would be up days and there would be down days, but never once was there a day when time stood still. I had begun to forget what that felt like, gladly making it a deep, distant memory. I filled my mind with the present: all the adventures, the dangers, the questions, and emotions that would quell on a daily basis. I was alert and alive.

It was not just the adventures that brought me back to life, not even close. It was him as much as it was anything else. How could someone not feel alive while in his presence? He swelled with and gushed life. He craved it through his puzzles, his adventures, his experiments. Not a single moment went by that he wasn't after something. Always itching for more, he was. That is why he would get himself into so much trouble… why he would get me into so much trouble. He made me livid with the things that he did. It was as if he cared about nothing and no one else around him. He could be so selfish and so manipulative. I often wondered why he bothered to have me around other than to torture me.

But then there would be brief moments in time, a window almost, where I would see past all of that and could make out, just barely, that he did care and he did appreciate my being around. It was those brief moments that would force everything to a stop and I would sink into a deep feeling of contentment… of home. I can't it explain it anymore than that. I had found my home. As dysfunctional and ridiculous as it was, it was my home and I had no desire to go anywhere else.

Things got harder over time. It was slowly beginning to feel like the world was being set fire. It all started reeling and spiraling, I thought I would lose the ground beneath me. All I could do was look to him and together we would work to stop it. It was in that time that I clung to him the tightest. I was scared for him. I knew that his stupid self was too interested and curious to realize how deep he was burying himself. I had to try my hardest to be the one that kept him out of the fire, before I watched him burn with the rest of the world. But the flames kept getting bigger, I realized that by clinging to him I was not saving him, but instead I was letting us both burn. It all happened so quickly and before I could catch up to it our world had gone ablaze and then just as quickly… my world had died.

He stared at the screen, his fingers frozen above the keys not knowing what would come from them next. It hurt… it had been so long since he had written any words and now they were flowing too quickly for his mind to keep up. Before he let it all sink in and he returned to the icy void he had become so accustomed to, his fingers began to move again, not thinking of what he was saying, just pouring directly from his heart.

Three-hundred and seventy-two days ago, my world burned to the ground. I am left here, staring in to the ashes of it all and wondering how it happened. Over time, I have examined each step that led up to it all. I can't believe how much happened so quickly. It is no wonder I was blindsided, anyone else in my situation would have been as well. But here I am, each day asking myself what I could have done to stop it. What I could have done to save him. No matter what anyone believes, I know who he was. No one can change my mind.

I had been angry and confused, and I did fall victim to the belief that it had all been imaginary. How could I not? In all that emotion, all I could focus on were the last words he said to me before I watched him fall. Those last words haunted me more than anything else. How could he have lied to me for so long? How could I have believed it all? But that didn't last long at all. He was many things in his life: a dick, selfish, pompous, overly curious, and painfully dramatic. But there is one thing he was not.

Sherlock was not a fake.

Again his fingers paused, his hands coming to a rest on his lap. The past year had been an emotional hurricane. Through it all, though, he had realized something. Though he felt overwhelmed with grief and betrayal, he found he was still unconditionally devoted. His life had completely fallen apart, yet he still felt a small surge that motivated him. He wanted nothing more than to protect the tainted name of his best friend; the most important person in his life. After all this time, he still felt that same burst of energy when Sherlock's name crossed his mind, when he reminisced about a particularly interesting case, when he sat awake at night speculating what really happened on that God forsaken day.

His mind finally caught up to his fingers and everything he had written sank into him and his chest began to ache. All of the hurt he had tried to hold at bay, all of the loneliness he pretended didn't exist. All of those times he wanted to cry but convinced himself that it wasn't worth it. With a hollow, shaky breath he lifted his hands back to the keyboard. He let the words come freely as he finished the first blog he had written since that day.

I believe in Sherlock Holmes. I believe in the man that he was before his name had been blackened. I believe in all the good that he did and all the people that he helped. I believe that the reason he died is because he felt he had to, that he had been forced in some way. He did not kill himself out of guilt. I will never accept that as the truth. As long as I am alive, I will defend his name no matter what anyone else out there says. Sherlock was my best friend; I like to believe that I knew him pretty bloody well. I was with him through it all and I know that his stories – our stories – were true. I will go to the grave devoted to him and who he truly was.

John fell back in his seat, taking another deep, strained breath. He realized he had been hitting the keys far too hard. He was crying, his hands were shaking, and his mind was racing. Though it had been over a year, the anger and the pain still felt fresh. He spent so long waiting and trying not to believe, that when the truth finally made itself painfully obvious, he felt like the world was caving around him all over again. John had hidden himself in the blackened ash of his past so he would not have to deal with this horrific present. As he began to release all of his pain, as it flowed freely without falter, the truth dawned on him.

Sherlock was dead, and he had been dead for three-hundred and seventy-two days. He was not coming back. No matter how hard John wished that to be false, he knew in the depths of his heart. A soul wrenching sob escaped from his throat and he buried his head into his hands. He felt completely alone; more so than he had ever felt before. His Sherlock was gone, and he had done nothing to prevent it. He had watched it happen. The images never left his head…how could they? How could he have not prevented this?

John yelled. He yelled as loudly and as anguished as he could. His hands fisted into his hair and his face scrunched up as tightly as it could. He yelled until there was nothing left in him. As his voice went hoarse, he lowered his head to the desk so it rested just beside the keyboard. His right hand slowly, weakly caressed the keys. Without a single though in his head, his hand typed directly from his heart. One letter at a time, the slow clicks echoing in the now deathly silent room. One sentence. Just one, a mere three words, but the weight of John's very self echoed behind them. All the love, anguish, adventure, sorrow, happiness, and hurt – he felt it all weigh on him as his hand finally slipped from the keys.

One last miracle.


End file.
